


Good Person

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: It's 1899 and Davey is missing a lot of terminology to describe his experiences, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 11:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17223191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Davey tries to explain his social anxiety to Jack.





	Good Person

_It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re happy to see you. You’re a good person. You did right by them, and that’s all that matters. You’re alright, this is alright, this will be fine. They’ll be happy to see you, and this will be fine._

Davey didn’t speak the words out loud, but he repeated them to himself, as he made his way to the distribution center for the first time in five days. He walked with his hands curled at his side, his left thumb stroking his palm, something he’d never been much aware of, until Sarah had pointed out to him one day that he always did this when he was nervous. Now he couldn’t unnotice it, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop either. The pads of his fingers were calloused from working hard all summer and up through the fall; his skin was dry and chapped, the way it always got in the winter. He noticed these things. He breathed.

Just because he was back in school now didn’t mean that he couldn’t sell on Saturdays, Davey reminded himself. Just because Les had made at least six new best friends on his own first day of class, and had spent Friday night sleeping at one of their houses, didn’t mean that Davey wouldn’t be welcome all on his own. Just because being unwelcome was and always would be a possibility, didn’t mean that Davey’s role in the strike could be diminished or taken away from him, now that his life was doing its darnedest to shape itself back into what it was before. Just because… Just because. There were so many becauses, each one more dire than the last, but just because worry had settled into all of its usual places, in Davey’s chest and his hands and his lungs and in the very pit of his stomach, didn’t mean that there wasn’t strength and hope behind it.

Crutchie was the first to notice Davey taking his spot at the back of the line. He gave a hoot, and a wave.

“Hey, look who’s back back, with his smarty pants on and everything,” Romeo teased.

“Got a scholarly opinion on today’s headlines?” Race asked, words slurred around his ever present cigar.

David squinted upwards, at the big board where the headlines were usually written. “Just that the guy who puts them up is getting out of bed later and later these days.” He was surprised by how quiet the words came out.

“It’s 'cause the sun is getting up later and later these days,” Crutchie suggested.

“It’s cause we was out drinkin’ together till two in the morning last night, and I bribed him three coronas to write 'Spot Conlon wears polky-dotted under-drawers’ up there on the big sign,” Racetrack said, spreading out his arms in mock innocence at the looks and shoves the other boys were giving him. “What?” he asked, bending over to pick up his hat, which Specs had knocked clean off his curly head. “Don’t you'se believe me?”

“You trying to say that it was somebody else, what kept half of us awake with his snoring all night?” Finch asked.

“You trying to say it was somebody else whose feet stank up the entire lodging house?” Elmer added.

“You drooled on the pillow, Race. Anyways, I believes you plenty about the under-drawers, but not about getting in with the headline writer.” Jack came up behind Davey, put his arms around his shoulders as he spoke. Suddenly the entire conversation felt a lot more in focus, like Davey was a part of it, and not watching it from the outside.

“Coulda been your doppelgänger doing all those things,” Davey suggested. His beaming smile faltered only briefly, in time with Race’s look of confusion, which faded just as quickly.

“That’s it!” Race snapped his finger. “That’s what I got. A dopey-gaggin-whatever, and he looks just like me!”

A few of the boys groaned, but by now the headline had been put up, and the window of the distribution center was sliding open. Davey let himself be pushed forward with the others to buy his papes, a triumphant one hundred, just like he’d been buying ever since the strike ended. He willed himself to leave school behind, to summon up the casual equilibrium he’d gained over the summer, the part of him that had felt like he was made for carrying the banner.

—–

The cold meant that everybody took even less selling breaks than usual. There was no better way to keep warm, after all, than to wander around shouting your head off. Davey would’ve never thought he’d be comfortable doing that, but it was a lot better than sitting in a classroom that was protected from the elements, but where you couldn’t move around enough to forget that the breath was coming out of your mouth in white puffs, and that the other boys had been caught passing notes speculating on just what you’d been up to when you were away, and whether or not you looked raggeder than before.

It was was a relief to be back with Jack and the others, but maybe not as much of one as Davey had expected it to be. Davey didn’t believe in hell in the spiritual sense, but metaphorically speaking, things at school had reached a point where the word might apply, at just around the same time that his pa had messed up his arm. Well, things at school, and things that had more to do with being stuck in his own skin day and day out, fighting the alarm bell within his head, that told him that breathing through his mouth when his nose got stuffed up was a cause for shame, or that hitting his head on a door frame when he was trying to enter a room, while hardly damaging at the moment, was just the kind of thing that ought to keep a guy nauseas with worry, replaying the event up through the night. And then pa’s accident had brought everything to a head, gotten Davey to the point where he was so scared that it was scaring Les, something he’d never wanted to have happen. But things were better now. It wasn’t that Davey had overcome everything that had tied him in knots, but even after just one week of school, he realized that it was different than it had been before. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t torture.

He found himself telling Jack about it, when the other boy finally suggested they grab some grub somewhere, and warm up for a spell. They went to Tibby’s, where they both got potato soup, after scanning the menu for the warmest thing available. It cost just a little too much, and it was notoriously watery, but if Davey could have ordered a bowl of liquid heat, he would have.

Jack was the one to start the conversation. “You’s back to buttoning your shirt right up to the neck,” he said.

Davey touched his collar. “It’s cold,” he said.

Jack snorted. “Guess we can’t all of us go around showing all our assets up to the world. You’re gonna tell me it ain’t sensible, right?”

If Jack’s clothing had seem to be falling apart in the summer, it looked even worse in the winter, but Davey didn’t say anything about that. At least not directly. “Can I ask my ma to knit you a scarf?” he asked.

“Nah, get her to make one for your school friends.”

David didn’t answer that right. He’d told Jack before that he didn’t exactly have school friends, and Jack had told him not to worry, that he would.

“Y'know, it’s different there from out here,” Davey tried to explain.

“Yeah? Well, everywhere’s different than everywheres else. That’s kinda how the world works. You doing alright with it, kid?”

Davey took a bite of his soup, and told himself that the heat he felt was from that. “That’s a weird thing to start calling me,” he shot back.

Jack just laughed. “Alright, fair enough. But how are you doing, anyways? Um… Are you learning stuff? Your classes good? The other boys…?”

More soup. “Um… Yeah. I mean, we’re learning about William Blake, and the poems he wrote. I like them. I think you might. I’ve got some people to sit with at lunch. I don’t know about them, Jack, but they might be okay. Does that sound ungrateful? Maybe I oughta be more enthusiastic, huh?”

Jack shrugged. “If you ain’t, you ain’t.”

“Maybe I ain’t. Maybe I am. I feel like I’m better at it than before. Maybe some people don’t like me…”

“Lotsa people do.”

Davey couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks, but that’s not the point. I’m just saying, it’s not as hard as it used to be to try and test out who does and who doesn’t. I still think a lot about things going wrong, but I don’t know. I feel stronger these days, I guess.” Davey finished off is speech with a little shrug, as if what he was saying wasn’t important, and as if the words didn’t taste a little strange in his mouth. He looked down at his soup, wondered if he was saying things that Jack cared to hear, and wondered if that was very important (Jack was very important. Jack was definitely very important.).

Jack reached across the table, and grabbed hold of Davey’s wrist, just for a few seconds, with a hand that was warm from the bowl it had been holding. He patted the back of Davey’s hand before letting go, with a crooked sort of half smile.

“That’s good Davey. You belong there.”

Davey didn’t say anything.

“Here too,” Jack added, just before Davey’s heart could sink.

“I’m still gonna ask my ma about knitting you that scarf,” Davey said. He liked his lips. “Maybe a red one. Or a blue. Or…”

Jack laughed. “You go ahead and do that. And hey, I look good in every color. You don’t gotta worry.”

“That’s like telling the wind not to blow. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it happens, it happens,” Davey said. It was true enough, but it was also true that he wasn’t feeling very worried at that very moment, that he had hope of more moments like this coming. Perhaps (hopefully) a lot of them would be with Jack, but not all of them. Davey had his own power after all. The strike had been the beginning of learning about it, but not the end.


End file.
